Staff photo shoot

I have been taking photos for the university to give them head shots for the website. i found this a great experience for working in the studio and also of studio location but with studio lighting, this has given me experience working in difficult situations where compromise is necessary

The first week i used the studio in the university, this allowed for an easy setup, and we had lighs placed where we wanted them to get the best image we could.

for the second week of shooting, I went to media city, where we were faced with a really bad room for both space and lighting fortunately me and my colleague that I was working with, were able to get the room changed to a space that was better for photographs. this experience has taught me that you always need to be on your toes for photography as a professional, as you don't always know the conditions you will have on the day. Had time not been an issue, i would have most likely visited the location before shooting though.

Susan Sontag On photography

On photography is a book written by Susan Sontag, in the book she writes about her interpretations as to what photography is, and what it means.

Sontag starts by saying how she sees photographers as "enlarging and altering what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe" she says that photographers are a "grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing. by this I feel she is putting a photographer almost on a pedestal above the rest of what is deemed to be the average person, although I could be interpreting this wrong.

Sontag comments on how we like to collect the world through photographs because they are "lightweight, cheap to produce, easy to carry about, accumulate, store. i would agree that this probably was the case when the book was first published in 1977 however now because of the way technology photographs are less physical and more like the films she described and lights that flicker on the wall, and disappear without power, they lack physicality.

"Photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are" i guess the easiest way to explain this is, that the photographer only photographs what they want someone to see, it is their own interpretation of the world through a lens, especially now in the age of computers, not only do we photograph what we want to photograph, but we also edit them, to make them look how we want them to look. This comes back to the hyperreal and making something over perfect.

"Recently, Photography has become also as widely practiced as sex and dancing - which means that, like every mass art form, photography is not practiced by most people as an art. It is mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, and a tool of power."
I would say that this quote is more true now than it ever has been. a huge number of people have smartphones, all of which can take photographs, which we upload to social media, "facebook" "instagram" and "snapchat" because it is the social norm "the done thing". nearly all of these photos are just mundane photographs with limited though behind them.

Grundberg The crisis of the real

The opening of the book starts with a quote "Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation. it is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology), but of consealing the fact that the real is no longer real"

The book starts by looking at, and explaining post modernism, and what it means for photography. Grundberg explains how there are many different interpretations as to what postmodernism actually is but his interpretation is "I would argue, in short, that postmodernism, in its art and its theory, is a reflection of the conditions of out time" he talks about how less is more in the artistic sense of post modernism. 

Grundberg touches on rephotography, which is the art of reusing a photograph to create a different meaning, with rephotography you dont go out ant take original photographs, you re use what is already available.

I would say that Grundberg does a good job of trying to clear up what post modernism is, and touches on various post modernism techniques how they are achieved, and often the reasoning behind them, or his interpretation at least. 

Technical skills.

I have been working on my technical skills and framing when taking images, I have been taking more time over my photographs. This extra time over my photographs makes the images look better and also in some cases can significantly reduce the post processing required as there is less work requires to make the images look as good as they can do.

I have take time to work in the photography studio photographing portraits of people, this is to help improve my abilities in this area. by the time i finish at uni, i want to be good at most types of mainstream commercial photography, so that i am confident being a freelance photographer.

Roland Barthes Camera Lucida

Roland Barthes was a French literary theorist. He looked at many schools of theory including semiotics, social theory and Marxism

the book Camera Lucida reflections on photography looks at interest in photography and still images, as opposed to the "moving images of cinema.
he talks about how a photograph mechanically records a moment in time which can never be repeated.

He looks at how the photograph can be the object of three practices or emotions
The operator as the Photographer
The spectator as Ourselves and anyone who chooses to look through the photographs
The person or object that is photographed is the Target

Barthes talks about observation both being the observer and the observed
He talks about how he can be observed without knowing it, but how more often he had been photographed, and how he knows he has been photographed. Barthes talks bout how once he knows he is being photographed he starts to pose, thus creating an image for the camera. He talks about how when he poses, he knows that he is posing, and wants you to know that he is posing.

Barths also talks about how a photograph shows  lot more about a person, period of time and place than a painted portrait does. as you see more photographs you start to understand a little bit about the subject you are looking at.

Organisation

So far one of the main things that i have been working on is my organisation. i have been taking special care to make sure that all of my events and projects get put into my planner / calendar on my computer. The main advantage to doing this, is that my events and deadlines are available for me to see both on the computer and my mobile phone.
It is my hope that that this will become normal practice for me and help me become more organised in the future when i have more work going on simultaneously.

being well organised also helps stop me worrying about the amount of work i have to do, as by having a schedule for the work i need to do it puts things into perspective, manageable chunks.

Better lighting.

In order to improve my skills with lighting, I have agreed to photograph the staff portraits for the university website and this will help by giving me invaluable studio time to practice and improve my skills and abilities in this photographic area. it is also my hope that from taking my time to do work for the university that It may provide opportunities for me to get some paid work in the future.